Sunday, October 4, 2009

Deb forwarded me an email from Thrillist last week. Specifically, this one mentioned Louisa's new fall menu. Funny, I'd gotten the same email, but might have skimmed right past the Macaroni and Cheese!Cheese!Cheese! part. But Deb and I work in the same neighborhood and have been talking about getting together after work for... well... ages! We're both fairly busy ladies, what can I say? But she knows I love mac 'n' cheese.

The irony is that neither of us was actually working in SLU that day. She was working from home and I have Fridays off. Either way we decided to have an early dinner at Louisa's. Mostly, of course, for the mac 'n' cheese.

I've been to Louisa's just once before. I grabbed a sandwich there back in the pre-Whole Foods days of the neighborhood. Louisa's bakes their own bread in house, so a sandwich is a good way to go there.

Susanna recently had lunch at Louisa's, and of course, she had the mac 'n' cheese. It was not her best experience. But I had high hopes for this new fall menu of theirs. No idea if it was the same mac 'n' cheese that Susanna had or not.

It was listed first on the menu.

The description is well done. Enticing. Informational. Exciting!Punctuation!Added!to!the!name!

So, we each ordered a serving. Deb also had a lovely salad.

Then came the main course.

It was a nice consistency of cheese sauce. It came out directly from the oven.

I liked it, I really did. But, I would have preferred the noodles a little more al dente. I also felt the paprika was under used. I like a little kick of flavor in my mac. Garlic, onions, mustard, cayenne, chili flakes, chipotle chili powder, liquid smoke, BACON. But all of these things can get lost in the starchy, creamy nature of macaroni and cheese. Less is often more, but in the case of macaroni and cheese, I think it's important to make sure you have enough.

I did appreciate that the edges had baked to a nice, crumbly, melt in your mouth crispiness.

And obviously, we had no problem finishing the food.

From the moment we stepped into Louisa's, we smelled cinnamon rolls baking. Since Louisa's is a bakery, I knew I had to have dessert. I had a lovely peach cobbler. The crust was divine.

Louisa's carries lovely wines and some jazz musicians were setting up right as we were leaving. This macaroni and cheese may not make my mental list of favorites, but it was a nice dinner with a dear friend.